Thursday, March 3, 2011

[Hated hell-bird "Ravenzomg" just sent me this review that someone wrote on a blog claiming to belong to noted doppelganger-haver "Capn" but also pretending to be the blog of the aforementioned hated hell-bird "Ravenzomg." Pretty boring as far as elaborate frauds go, but whatever. -Ed.]

[Obvious doppleganger troll made a post and now I'm submitting this to Rob because because, look! I apparently wrote it without even noticing! If it's not entertaining, I had nothing to do with this, unless this was particularly awful then the doppleganger was probably channeling its inner Ravenzomg. -Ravenzomg]

Alt text: Birds are Aves, which is part of the clade Theropoda, which is in Saurischia, which is in Dinosauria. Those birds outside our windows are dinosaurs. We can clear out the rest of our brains because we now have the best fact.

It's clear from this comic that Randy has discovered phylogenetics and evolutionary biology. Good for him! It's about time he widened his knowledge base beyond maths, physics and out-of-date pop culture.

Unfortunately for Randy, he only found out about phylogenetics and failed to research it to any depth. There are a number of rather telling clues to this:

1) He says that lizards should be folded up into ornithology. Why not any other reptiles? Because Randy believes that lizards and reptiles are entirely interchangeable words, that's why.

2) He is making a reference to the contention between paraphyletic and monophyletic classifications, but he has picked 'herpotology' as the battleground, a discipline that has obvious reasons for studying the groups they do.

3) Notice how you need little to no knowledge of evolutionary biology to understand this comic? The geek references are spoonfed to us this time.

4) He acts like the whole 'birds used to be dinosaurs' is new, groundbreaking knowledge, rather than something first proposed in 1868 and known to any fucking child who took more than a passing interest in Jurassic Park. You know, geeks. How has this little tidbit of info passed by someone so goddamn obsessed with raptors?

Kudos to him for passing up the opportunity to draw a close-up diagram of genital herpes, but he again frustrates us by taking a fairly funny idea (cladistic insults) and giving it a terrible, half-baked execution. Why two conferences? Why not one with an audience member supplying one side of the debate? 'Assholes' and 'douchebags'? Why not science it up a bit, give the Latin names or use something more creative?

When I was dating Sandy I bought a lot of brandy. Took eight to make her randy and all I had was shandy. Another thing 'bout Sandy what often came in handy was slipping her a mandy, she didn't half go bandy.

You people don't understand. Of course birds coming from dinosaurs is common knowledge. Randall is simply admitting that as a child he decided he had learnt the best fact ever and refused to learn anything else thereafter. He tries to keep up the facade of being knowledgable, and it does somehow work on some people despite everything in his comic being so obviously gleaned from Wikipedia, but it gets hard sometimes and he has to slip in an admission to help feel better.

For more information on Randall retaining no knowledge beyond his childhood, see also his obsession with ball pits and drawing sustenance directly from the human breast.

Kind of complicated to follow, with a lot of big words written real small and also confusing because I thought that that is more or less common knowledge. I guess Randy's too busy with his underwater robot to give comics a second thought.

Oh God, if derpetology really did headline reddit a couple of days then Randall doesn't even get the credit of having been independently browsing Wikipedia articles that caught his interest. He was literally being figuratively spoonfed, which is probably lucky for him considering the ineptitude with food he revealed in his "how to cook" comic.

It is inspiring the way libertarians have faith in capitalism as a naturally self-correcting system. They envisage a world in which an angel forever looks benevolently down upon our world, and his face is that of Uncle Pennybags.

I feel I would be unlocking wonders if I could share in their dream, but I am only human. All too human.

I think the greatest moment in Randall's laziness is that, not able to think of any good and funny idea for the fourth quadrant of the chart, he just stuck "Other" in there and left it for his fans to imagine it.

"Come with me and you'll be in a world of pure imagination..."

Next comic: a blank square. Caption: "Imagine the funniest thing you can that is related to Star Wars". Cue the GOOMHfest!

"It is inspiring the way communists have faith in capitalism as a naturally self-correcting system. They envisage a world in which an angel forever looks benevolently down upon our world, and his face is that of Uncle Pennybags."

Actually, I would say this is probably the funniest xkcd in a while, by which I mean, it is the only funny xkcd in a while. I mean really; no post punchline dialog, not too much text, the punchline is short, he explains everything we need to know to get the joke, and he doesn't go into some big stupid nerd rant about how "herpetologists are so stupid and their science is bad and I am smarter than them."

@8:44 So I'm scratching my head and thinking and scratching my head some more, and I can't work out who 7:47 is. Come on guys, this is a fascinating conversation going on here but you have to help me out by making it easier to follow.

I'm part of a nerdy comedy group at university. I like dinosaurs as much as the next human being, but the way these people act like LOL RAPTORS is an automatic punchline to every joke grinds on my nerves something terrible.

What the hell is this?

Welcome. This is a website called XKCD SUCKS which is about the webcomic xkcd and why we think it sucks. My name is Carl and I used to write about it all the time, then I stopped because I went insane, and now other people write about it all the time. I forget their names. The posts still seem to be coming regularly, but many of the structural elements - like all the stuff in this lefthand pane - are a bit outdated. What can I say? Insane, etc.

I started this site because it had been clear to me for a while that xkcd is no longer a great webcomic (though it once was). Alas, many of its fans are too caught up in the faux-nerd culture that xkcd is a part of, and can't bring themselves to admit that the comic, at this point, is terrible. While I still like a new comic on occasion, I feel that more and more of them need the Iron Finger of Mockery knowingly pointed at them. This used to be called "XKCD: Overrated", but then it fell from just being overrated to being just horrible. Thus, xkcd sucks.

Here is a comic about me that Ann made. It is my favorite thing in the world.

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